


Here

by Not2be



Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: Bit of Oswald angst, Fluff, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, not graphic at all though
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-23
Updated: 2018-04-23
Packaged: 2019-04-26 21:46:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14411202
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Not2be/pseuds/Not2be
Summary: Oswald and Jim lay in bed talking about the beach and other things.





	Here

**Author's Note:**

> Very brief allusion to past self-harm but its not discussed only implied. There is also reference to suicidal ideation but nothing graphic. Just things to keep in mind.

They lay together in comfortable silence, only artificial light from the city filters through the window. They often end up like this but tonight Oswald feels far away to Jim. The cop rubs lazy circles over Oswald’s stomach with the dry pad of his thumb, admiring the smattering of freckles across pale skin. He wonders how many people the king pin would allow to touch him this way and still keep both their hands. He doesn’t even react when Jim’s fingers ghosts over the scar on his stomach. Oswald has his fair share of scars as dose Jim but that one- Jim still remembers the way the smaller man shivered under his touch the first time he found it, the shame and emotion so clear on his face.

“What is my murderous little bird thinking about?” It’s far too domestic for whatever this is, but he likes to tease Oswald a little.  Oswald suddenly looks as if he’s realizing where he is for the first time.

“Oh, just fantasizing” He says somewhat wistful.

“Oooh, about what pray tell?” Jim asks suggestively, biting mischievously at Oswald’s neck. He squirms and playfully swats Jim’s arm away.

“James Gordon, can you not keep it your pants?” he huffs.

“You seem to prefer that I don’t” Oswald actually _blushes_ at that. King of criminal activity in one of the most violent cities and he blushes. Jim thinks Oswald might just be his undoing and at the moment he can’t bring himself to mind very much.    

“It was an innocent day dream” He says finally breathless and a little indignant but shuffles closer to Jim’s warmth none the less. Jim hums encouragingly.

“…About living on the beach” Jim can’t help the surprised laugh that over takes him.

“What!? Are you that shocked?”

“Yes, actually I am.”

“And why is that _pray tell?”_ Jim holds back an Angry Birds reference as he admires Oswald’s full pout. 

“I don’t know I just…” Oswald looks at him expectantly not letting him off the hook.

“It’s just so…” As Jim is stammering an emotion flashes across Oswald’s face that he can’t quite place, he doesn’t know if it’s because of the darkness of the room, the haziness of his brain, or because its Oswald.

“Good to know I can still surprise you detective.” But it doesn’t seem like a good thing the way he says it.

“Why don’t you?”

“Pardon?” The smaller man looks up at him as if he’s just asked the most ridiculous question. 

“Move to the beach, lord knows you have the money. It could be nice” _It could be easier_.

Jim tries to picture himself living out a normal quaint life by a beach somewhere, with a family as he always thought he would growing up, but that vision of his life seems far away now. It's Oswald’s turn to laugh.

“James, I wouldn’t last two days. Too much clean air, too much silence, too much space, too much time. You and I need adrenalin like we need oxygen we stagnate and suffocate without it.” There’s a pause and Jim contemplates the truth of that.

“I wish the life I fanaticized about was the life I already live” In any other context Jim would think the admission was too personal, too vulnerable. But in the shared space of his small dark room…its different here. His muscles feel like butter, and he can feel Oswald’s heartbeat, they’re allowed to be different here if only a little, if only briefly.

“Didn’t you dream of this?”  The detective asks surprised.

“I suppose I did at one point, yes.” Oswald thinks about it a second longer “But a day dream isn’t the same as ambition or… _need_ ”

Jim tries to imagine little Oswald and what he dreamed of being when he grew up, plotting to take over Gotham’s underworld. Short tempered, ambitious, and sharp, born with blood in his mouth. Jim smiled despite himself thinking of a melodramatic and passionate young Oswald.

“I didn’t always realize this is what I would be doing.” He said as if reading Jim’s mind. “I used to wait for other people to respect me, I thought of respect as something to be given freely.” He chuckled at his own naiveté.

“I had to learn that nobody in this world loves you for free” Jim was surprised when the sentiment felt like a punch in the chest. He pushed down the thought that maybe this thing they had wasn’t as casual as he tried to convince himself it was.

“When did it change?” Oswald was very still next to him as if lost in thought again. Jim almost thought Oswald hadn’t heard him until he finally opened his mouth.

“I had an epiphany as all of the greats do” Jim chuckled warmly at the crime boss’s gravitas.

“I was a teenager and I walked down to the pier- the one you and I first met actually” He said as if it were a quaint meet cute. By Gotham’s standards it wasn’t that strange of a first meeting; coffee shop or pleading for your life on a dirty pier with a dirty cop its all the same. 

“I walked down to the pier with my pockets full of rocks.” There’s another silence heavier this time. Jim opens his mouth to say something and is relieved when Oswald beats him to it.

“Then I realized… it would be awfully convenient for them if I were to self-destruct, to take myself out of the game. If this city doesn’t want me…its going to have to do its own dirty work.  Also, what it would do to my poor mother.”

Jim runs his hand over the even parallel lines, he can’t see in the darkness but knows live on the inside of Oswald’s thighs. He’s never had the courage to ask or perhaps thought it too presumptuous to ask, but he feels as if he can read a new language for the first time as he brushes over them.

“I knew the best vengeance was to claw my way to the top, I wouldn’t cease until I did. Most people let pride get in the way; I wasn’t afraid to crawl through the muck, to start at the bottom, crouching and waiting.  I was Fish Mooney’s umbrella boy, Maroni’s bitch... I suppose that type of mentality may come back to bite me one day…” _like loving you even though it will probably break my heart._  

“Do you still think about the pier?”

Oswald blinks at the wall a few times then “Sometimes” indifferent.

“I meant as in-“

“Yes.” He thought about all of it. Jim sparing his life, he thought about Ed trying to end it, he thought about himself as a teenager that day, and from time to time he thought about what it would be like to go back.

Jim swallowed thickly and unconsciously squeezed the other man a little tighter.

“I know you may judge my actions, I know how you may see me, Jim. We’ve both done things to be where we are. And am I proud of everything I’ve done? No. But I’m honest enough with myself to know I’d do it all again to get here.”

“I’m glad you’re here, Oz.”

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to write a more vulnerable and somewhat caring Jim/Oswald, so sorry if it was OOC. Thanks for reading!


End file.
